Heathcote Williams: The Cat Who was Shot for Treason

British soldier ‘shakes hands’ with a kitten on a snowy bank, Neulette, 1917

A cat was shot for treasonIn World War One.It had acted as an intermediaryBetween Allied and Axis lines:English and German soldiersCould send messagesTo each otherBy tying scraps of paperTo the cat's collar.The cat then ran across No Man's Land,From one trench to the other.

When the War Office found out,Allied superior officersOrdered that the cat, nicknamed Felix,Should be shot for its being a go-between,And thus enabling fraternizationBetween the warring troopsOn the Western Front.

For, after a Christmas truceWhen enmity miraculously fadedAnd one German dug-out sang 'Heilige Nacht'As its English opposite number joined inWith 'Silent Night';And when deadly enemiesShyly scrambled outInto the open airClutching presentsOf rum and schnapps, and lebkochenAnd Huntley and Palmer's digestive biscuits;And when they swapped them with broad smiles,And when impromptu football matchesBroke out up and down the battle lines...These popular displays of comradeship;These congenial armistices;These undeclared cease-firesWere outlawed by the governmentWho declared that all such happeningsWere high treason,And subject to the same condign punishmentAs cowardice, namely the firing squad.

Felix the cat, however,(Called Nestor by the Germans)Was a law unto itself.It would wait patientlyWhilst cheery little scrawlsIn English and in GermanWere being attached to its collarBy trembling fingers, raw with cold:"Hello Fritz.""Gutentag Tommy.""Fröhliche Weihnachten, Tommy.""Happy Christmas, Fritz."

Back and forth the cat skipped across the snow,Across the hard, unforgiving soilOf No Man's Land; first appearing at MonsAnd later at Passchendaele.

Then Felix – just like the animalsIn the Middle Ages who, notoriously,Were tried for being suspectedOf being in league with the devil –Was judged by the top military brassTo constitute a threatThrough its enabling treasonous acts,Through its being an accessoryTo the undermining of the serial hate-crimeThat was World War One;A war crime that left fifteen million deadIncluding a peace cat,Who's barely ever mentionedBut whose bloodstained paw-printsAre a lone, feline testamentTo war's absurdity.